The Republican Party has a messaging problem and must change its identification to avoid being deemed racist, according to a conservative activist.

K. Carl Smith, founder of the grassroots initiative The Conservative Messenger who calls himself a Fredrick Douglass Republican, says the GOP needs to broaden its base by getting back to the four tenets of what he calls Douglass Republicanism: respect for life, personal responsibility, respect for the Constitution and limited government.

Growing up in a mostly Democratic home, Smith decided to change his political affiliation and joined the Republican Party. However, Smith said the conservative movement needs to stop identifying itself by such names as Tea Party, constitutional conservative or Christian Conservative because those terms in the media mean "racist."

"We're losing the propaganda fight," he said. But Fredrick Douglass trumps the race card, he said. "You can't call a Frederick Douglass Republican a sellout or a racist," Smith said. Born a slave, Douglass would go on to become a capitalist and an entrepreneur -- and a Republican -- and when he died in 1895, he had $300,000 in savings, equivalent to about $10 million today, Smith said.

Smith said there are 20,000 people calling themselves Frederick Douglass Republicans in the country, 60 percent of them white.

It's not about race or cultural warfare, Smith says, but about principles. Smith asked a crowd of about 60 people: "Are you voting your values?"